There are a lot of opinions on multinationals and their tax practices. One conventional perception is that multinationals have a general tax advantage over their domestic competitors as their international operations allow for substantial tax management to minimize the corporate tax burden at group level. A number of tax policy projects are in process and…

Following my latest post on the Court of Justice’s decision in Commission v UK (C-172/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:50), I want to turn in this comment on the related issue of currency losses, which was recently addressed by Advocate General Kokott in her Opinion in case X AB v Skatteverket (C-686/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:31). The Advocate General concludes that Member…

Let’s go back a few weeks, to March 18, 2015. The EU Commission announces its much heralded Tax Transparency package. The package contains a surprise element: the link to the Code of Conduct Report of 1999. To refresh memories: this report, lead by a UK national, contained 66 harmful tax measures. The 66 could be…

After the first post on BEPS, I decided to go laterally and approach an issue that may resonate to many tax practitioners but unfortunately is not so widely discussed perhaps because of its interdisciplinary impacts – what are the consequences and limits for this “rush” towards massification of tax information data retrieval and exchange. We…

It is well known that case law from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) imposes limitations on the application of anti-avoidance rules by Member States. Accordingly, it is of vital importance that recommendations made under the OECD project on base erosion on profit shifting (the BEPS project), are adaptable, where necessary, to enable Member States…

Two cases recently discussed by the European Court of Justice provide a welcome opportunity to use this space for a quick review of the status of foreign loss relief under EU law. The first is the decision in Commission v UK (C-172/13, ECLI:EU:C:2015:50), delivered by the Grand Chamber of the Court of Justice on 3…

The OECD Public Discussion Draft on BEPS Action 14 (released on 18 December 2014) covers extensively dispute resolution mechanisms and ways to make them more effective. The subject has grown in importance as Mutual Agreement Procedures (“MAP”) have increased significantly especially on transfer pricing cross border adjustments. In this context, the BEPS Discussion Draft states…

It is well known that the world’s economies have turned into a global economy during the last decades. Moreover, it is nowadays common knowledge – also outside the professional tax community – that states are fighting each other for tax revenue, while multinationals are trying to reduce their tax burden through tax planning that may…

The German, French and Italian finance ministers, in a letter to the Commissioner for Taxation and Customs, Pierre Moscovici, as of November 2014 (Financial Times, December 1, 2014), have urged the European Commission to curb aggressive tax planning, base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS) in the EU, mainly caused by the lack of tax harmonization…